Transcript
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Jack Wagner (1:07)
Welcome to Other World. I'm your host Jack Wagner. This episode centers around a guy named David and an experience he had while camping as a teenager. He's a software engineer and also a musician living in the Bay Area. I met David a while ago and ever since he first told me this story, I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I've always wanted to explore certain aspects of his experience in more detail. Eventually I got the chance to do just that. In fact, after recording this interview, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole for a couple months on this topic, but I don't want to get ahead of myself with that. David had this experience when he was in high school out in Ojai, California, which is a beautiful place, an excellent place for camping, which is exactly what David and his friends were doing when they ended up encountering something very strange. I don't want to spoil anything, but what stuck out to me with this experience is that I'm used to people talking about seeing things that they can't comprehend. In this case, David not only saw something, he also heard something that he couldn't comprehend. This is episode 122. The title is the Hum Over Ojai and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello, is this Bobby?
David (2:40)
Yes, it is. At its core, the science you can't argue with.
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All of a sudden up in the sky.
Jack Wagner (2:46)
It's almost frustrating that it's happening.
David (2:48)
I'm literally I'm going to die. Its limbs were just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name's Dave. I live in the Bay Area. I just work as a software engineer up here, just in like the local tech, you know, hemisphere. I Am actually from Southern California and, you know, grew up. I had a very normal childhood, you know, had really no experiences in any sort of paranormal activity. Grew up just kind of vaguely believing in this stuff and never really thinking that it would actually come to fruition or that I would ever really experience anything like this. But that all changed when in the summer of 2013, in between my sophomore and junior year of high school, me and my group of guy friends wanted to do, like, a little weekend getaway camping trip to Ojai, California. We were working little odd end summer jobs, and so we were accruing, like, a little bit of money and allowances. So we wanted to kind of have that taste of freedom and like, oh, let's go on a trip all together. And we wanted to do a camping trip. And so we looked at some of the. The local places, like El Capitan Ranch on the coast, like central coast, and these kind of boutique, you know, camping experiences that are like a few hundred dollars a night. So we said, you know, screw that. We're just going to find the cheapest campsite that we can find, which was this place called Wheeler Gorge in Ohio. And it cost, like $40 a night. So between our group of eight guys, we just, like, pulled together some money. It was about the most that we could afford at the time. These were all, like, my best guy friends, you know, they're even now. Some of them were like, you know, groomsmen in my wedding. So it's my friends Zach and Diego. Those are like my best friends. They both played football with me, and they were. I wouldn't really call them tough, but they were certain. Like, I'm definitely more on the softer side. And they were the guys that kind of brought me out of my, you know, shy, like, sensitive shell and really kind of kind of be bros with me. There was Diego's brother, who's this very, like, stoic guy. And there was two other guys. One guy, we don't really keep in touch with him. His name is Daniel, but he was a devoted, like, sober guy. Like, didn't drink whatsoever. Like, this guy was dead sober the entire time. And then there was two other guys, guy named Al and Brian. They were in our friend group at the time as well. So we set out, we load up my. My old Toyota truck with all of the supplies. We had, like, I think two racks of beer, and we got, like, you know, a bunch of hot dogs, you know, typical, like, teenage boy cuisine and whatnot. And we drove out. It was like in the summer, so it Was like super, super hot in Ohio. It was like 90 to 100 degrees, super dry. Barely any sun coverage at the campground. Barely any people at the campground too. It's just like this, you know, your typical campground, you know, supervisor guy that lives on premise. And he just came up to us and was like, hey, guys, you know, I basically called our bluff. Was like, I know you guys have alcohol. I know you guys are underage. It's cool, I won't bother you. Just like, don't burn down the forest and we'll be so it was. We were definitely left to our own devices. And it was just so, so remote out there. And Wheeler Gorge is about 30 minutes inland from Ojai, so it's even deeper into the mountains and even more remote. You know, one of those places where you lose service about 20 minutes away from the campsite, and it's just kind of a dead zone. So the first day we were there, you know, nothing too crazy, you know, we just played beer pong for like five hours or so. Just hung out, you know, typical camping stuff. We all shared this one big family sized tent that my buddy Zach had brought. So we're all kind of sardined next to each other, side by side. And because it was so hot, we also slept without the tarp on top of the tent just because there's no moisture. We wanted to be able to see the stars and the whole sky because it was so remote. There was no light pollution, so we were able to do that. There was tons of raccoons, though. So the raccoons were just completely shredding through our garbage the entire night. So I remember being kept up. By then, my buddy Brian had snuck in a bag of hot Cheetos into the tent for like a little late night snack. And anybody that's ever been camping knows that you don't keep any food in the tent just for that reason. So the first night, we actually got woke up by a family of raccoons. We breaking into our tent and undoing the zipper and like climbing all over us. So, yeah, it was just funny, all the commotion of that. You know how people say, like, oh, raccoons have hands, they actually have, like, little hands. I felt one, like, step on my thigh and I felt like it was almost just like a shrunken human hand just pressed onto my thigh. So we woke up the next day, you know, had some breakfast, just kind of shook off the night before. I think we ended up going on a hike or at least trying to. It was so hot that we couldn't actually really go up on the mountain. And I'm kind of glad that we did not because I'm sure we probably didn't have the necessary supplies. We were all kind of worn out from like, the, you know, the festivities of the day before. So kind of took it a little bit easier. Just listened to music. I think at one point we actually went into town just to get more supplies. Really just hung out and just chatted and goofed off like we normally did. But just, you know, camping, I was feeling pretty tired and just kind of over the festivities. So I just decided to take it easy and just help out making dinner and make some s' mores and whatnot and just kind of have a quieter evening in preparation of going home the next day. So we all went to bed pretty early, around like 10 or 11 or so. I was pretty much smack dab in the middle of the tent, just so I had a pretty clear view looking up into the sky. I recall not being obstructed by any sort of trees or even like barely even like the tent poles or what not. So I had a pretty clear view of everything. We learned our lesson from the previous night. We got rid of all the food out of the tent. We hung up our garbage bags on a nearby tree to get them out of reach for the critters and whatnot. So around 1 or 2 in the morning, I hear more commotion or I wake up to my. My friend. I forget who. I think it was like my Diego's brother or something, like, yelling like, what the fuck is that? Like, what is that? And my initial thought is like, Brian brought more hot Cheetos into the tent. And something else like a coyote got into the tent. So I woke up disgruntled. But when I actually became conscious, I just. I realized, like, what was actually happening. My sight and hearing are like, the first to come. And I'm like, curled up in my sleeping bag, so I couldn't really see. But I remember hearing this really, really loud humming frequency. Like just this noise just ringing in my head. And one thing that I recall about this was that it wasn't like a loud volume like you'd hear at like, a concert or whatnot. Like an artificially loud volume. It was like my entire body and skeleton was just resonating with this frequency. It was incredibly loud. It was so loud, it was inescapable. You couldn't plug your ears to get away from it. But it wasn't like a splitting, like, overly loud concert sound. Like, I'm a musician, I play live all the time. Our band, being in a metal band were pretty loud. And so, you know, we ear protection, because otherwise it's just like that super loud splitting, you know, ear ringing volume. But this didn't really have the same characteristics. This was something that, like, permeated my skull. Like, I'd almost hear, like my teeth rattling in my head. And it was just inescapable, this loud, just humming noise. You could try to plug your ears with your fingers and then hum. Mmm, like that. And you can hear the hum kind of rattle in your head. You really hear it inside of your head as opposed to this directional sound that's coming into your ears. It's almost like this is coming from inside of your body and then spreading outwards out of your body. You just can't get away from. You just can't get it out of your head. And so I kind of wipe the sleep out of my eyes and I look up and there's just this incredibly bright light just beaming down directly on top of us. So bright that it was obscuring not only its own shape, but I couldn't really see anything around me. I couldn't really see any of the trees. I could barely even see, like, my car that was parked like 20ft away. Like whenever you come out of, like an operation, you know, you get out of the anesthesia cloud and you have those. It's like this big center bright light. And then like a few lights kind of scattered, lining the center light, kind of like an overhead fixture like they'd see in, like a hospital. But it was just massive. And I could tell it was massive because it was burning with like the same ferocity of like an overhead lamp. Like direct, like, you know, a foot over your face. But it was clear that whatever this was was maybe a couple hundred feet in the air. So just tons and tons of light, like bright, hot, yellow light beaming down on us. Whatever it was, knew that we were there. And it was still nighttime. And I actually. I could see like a rough circular outline. But because the light was just so bright and directed in, like in our eyes, it's just really hard to tell what exactly it was the whole time. It's just hovering there, beaming down on us and, you know, just vibrating and emitting this resonant frequency. And I recall after everybody woke up, it was just very silent. You know, we weren't screaming, like when the raccoon had gotten in the tent. We were just all laying there silently looking up at it, like, transfixed. At this beaming light that was pointed down at us. I didn't recall feeling this way, but one of my friends on the trip had said that he felt, like, almost hypnotized by it. Like he was, like it was, like, pulling him up and like he was floating, though obviously nobody left the ground. But just, like, the feeling like his energy was being, like, pulled upwards. I could see just because of, like, the blocking out of, like, the stars and the constellations, that it was probably the length of, like, a school bus, I would say. So it was quite large, but it was. It was a circle, too. That's another kind of thing that felt kind of incredulous was that this particular craft kind of looked like a lot of the UFOs that I'd seen, you know, in media in my childhood. But it was unmistakably circular. It did not look like it was spinning or rotating. It just looked like it was like this static hovering object over us. It didn't look like it was tilting due to, like, balancing issues, you know, like a helicopter would. It was just perfectly static, floating in the air, like, weightless, basically. But it was massive. The lights seemed to take up most of, if not all of the surface area of the underneath of the craft, which I assume what we were looking at was the underneath of the craft. But again, just due to the. The bright directional lights, I could only really make out just the general shape and the size of looked to be pure black. Now, whether it was the material was black or it was, you know, refracting the light around it, like, almost like cloaking. Who's to say it looked like solid material. It didn't have any sort of shine like metal would. Almost like there's this artificial color black called vantablack. It's the blackest black that there is. So it looked like it wasn't even really registering the light, just no reflection of the light at all. I remember feeling just like a huge knot in my chest of dread, like, not knowing what it was going to do, whether or not we were going to be okay. I remember thinking, like. Thinking like, are we about to be abducted? Like, are we going to be, like, pulled into, like, a tractor beam or whatnot? So that's why it was really interesting when one of the other people there was saying that they felt like they were floating, looking at it, like, almost, like, hypnotically. But I remember just laying there in paralyzed fear, knowing that we were at the mercy of it. It knew we were there and at this point could do whatever it wanted with us. We had no cell service. We couldn't call anybody. I'm not even sure we would have had time to do anything. We just were. I remember just laying there paralyzed in fear, just, like, looking at it silently. We just sat there all transfixed in complete silence at this thing that was floating up over us. And eventually, after maybe a minute of it just hovering over us, it just slowly just floated away. As it started to move away from it, it almost felt like it had turned off the hypnotic qualities of the light. It noticeably got quieter immediately as it started to move, so it was almost like it was beaming something at us. And then once, when it deemed whatever it was doing, like, the task to be complete, then it turned off the hypnotic feeling of what it was doing. It didn't look like the beam was still even present at all when it started to move away again. When I said, it kind of just, like, turned it all off or, like, at least, like, turned down the light and turned down the resonant frequency. To go from experiencing something that is so inescapably loud to fading out, like, at the end of a song. It was. It was pretty mind blowing that all that happened in the span of maybe 20 seconds to where it was directly over us. And then it was completely out of sight in sound about 20 seconds. But it didn't look like it was. It didn't, like, blast off or. You know, I've seen the footage of UFOs where they will change direction and, you know, zip off at, like, unfathomable speeds. This one just seemed to kind of take its time and just move away at that point. I. As crazy as it is to say, but I think we all just kind of went back to sleep. We all, like, made sure everyone was okay. The guy that brought the hot Cheetos into the tent slept through this whole thing. I don't know how he did, but at that point, I think he'd woken up and just like, what. What was happening, you guys? I heard something going on, which is. Which is absurd. But, yeah, I also remember there not being any sort of noise, any sort of crickets. I couldn't even hear the creek that was next to us. It was almost just like this thing had just sucked up all the noise out of the environment. Even after it was long gone. It was just a completely dead night.